ITAPS was a SciDAC-2 project for which formal funding ended in 2012
The Interoperable Technologies for Advanced Petascale Simulations (ITAPS) The Interoperable Technolgoies for Advanced Petascale Simulations (ITAPS) interfaces were one of the mathematics enabling technologies centers in the Department of Energy's Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program in the 2010's.
At that time, SciDAC applications had a demonstrated need for advanced software tools to manage the complexities associated with sophisticated geometry, mesh, and field manipulation tasks, particularly as computer architectures move toward the petascale. The Interoperable Technologies for Advanced Petascale Simulations (ITAPS) interfaces were designed to deliver interoperable and interchangeable mesh, geometry, and field manipulation services that are of direct use to SciDAC applications. The premise of the technology development goal is that such services can be provided as libraries that can be used with minimal intrusion into application codes. Through SciDAC-1 funding, the ITAPS team developed and deployed a number of advanced technologies including front tracking, mesh quality improvement via smoothing and swapping, and adaptive mesh refinement (AMR), that were used by application scientists and provide ample evidence of the viability of this approach.
In SciaDAC-2, we continued to develop the most promising
of the
technologies identified in SciDAC-1 and invest in critical new areas
identified by SciDAC application teams. In particular, we
developed new geometry, mesh, and field services that support
PDE-constrained design optimization on deforming geometries, mesh
alignment, AMR-front tracking, verification, solution transfer
operations, dynamic partitioning and other parallel tools for
petascale simulations. Underlying these services are the common
interfaces that provide data-structure neutral access to mesh,
geometry, and field information. These interfaces are the key to
providing uniform access to all ITAPS tools and to creating
interoperability among ITAPS technologies. Using these technologies
we worked with application scientists to develop the next
generation of petascale simulation codes. In particular, we
continued our already strong collaborations in accelerator modeling,
fusion, and microbial cell modeling and have identified new areas for
collaboration in astrophysics, radiation transport, and groundwater
flow modeling.